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Steam sales increase 100 percent for the seventh straight year

Steam now hosts more than 40 million accounts and 1,800 games, and its 2011 year-over-year sales increased 100 percent for the seventh year in a row, Valve announced today with a ridiculously smug grin on its face (we assume). During the Holiday Sale, Steam clocked more than 5 million simultaneous users -- in perspective, that's easily more people than the entire population of Norway, all on Steam at the same time.

Steam served over 780 petabytes of data to gamers in 2011, more than doubling the amount delivered in 2010, Valve reported. More than 19 million items were traded in-game, Valve president Gabe Newell said, and he promised that more free-to-play titles will be launched in 2012 to supplement the 18 Steam already hosts.

Newell hasn't forgotten about Big Picture Mode, Valve's attempt to infiltrate living rooms with a top-boxy device that will offer Steam via controller navigation on "more screens throughout the house." Newell said Valve is "preparing for the launch" of Big Picture Mode, so we're guessing we can expect to see something concrete by 2015.

STEAM CLOSES RECORD 2011

5 Mil Simultaneous Users, Seventh Year of 100% Unit Sales Growth

January 6, 2012 - Valve® today announced the 2011 growth data for Steam, a leading platform for PC & Mac games and digital entertainment.

During 2011 the platform grew to offer over 1,800 games to over 40 million accounts. Year-over-year unit sales increased by more than 100% for the seventh straight year, and during the 2011 Holiday Sale Steam's simultaneous user number eclipsed the 5 million player mark.

Meanwhile Steam doubled the amount of content delivered in 2011 vs. 2010, serving over 780 Petabytes of data to gamers around the world. To meet the increasing demand for games and services on the platform, the Steam infrastructure more than doubled its service capacity and a new content delivery architecture was deployed to improve user download rates.

Over 14.5 mil copies of Steamworks games were registered during the year, a 67% increase over 2010. Steamworks titles shipped during 2011 include The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution , and more. Since the suite of services was released three years ago, Steamworks has shipped in over 400 games.

"Steam and Steamworks continues to evolve to keep up with customer and developer demands for new services and content," said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. "Support for in-game item trading prompted the exchange of over 19 million items. Support for Free to Play (FTP) games, launched in June, has spurred the launch of 18 FTP titles on Steam, with more coming in 2012. Looking forward, we are preparing for the launch of the Big Picture UI mode, which will allow gamers to experience Steam on large displays and in more rooms of the house."

For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com

About Valve

Valve is an entertainment software and technology company founded in 1996 and based in Bellevue, Washington. The company's portfolio of entertainment properties includes Half-Life®, Counter-Strike®, Day of Defeat®, Team Fortress®, PortalTM and Left 4 DeadTM. Valve's catalog of products accounts for over 40 million retail units sold worldwide. In addition, Valve is a developer of leading-edge technologies, such as the Source game engine and Steam, a broadband platform for the delivery and management of digital content. For more information, please visit www.valvesoftware.com.